Friday the 13th Attacks in Paris: The Work of Arab Terrorists or the Latest from Operation Gladio?

Today’s headlines are filled with news of spectacular attacks carried out last night by terrorists in Paris — again! — this time killing some 120 persons. As this is written, it is implied, if not actually reported, that the attackers were Muslim and that they were acting in response to French government policy vis a vis Arab and Muslim countries. The terrorist’s identities — police say they have killed them all — and personal histories have yet to be reported.

Friday the 13th is famously a day of ill-repute, but what I want to know is whether it’s a coincidence these events happened then, or a sinister joke, similar to others played on unsuspecting citizens during the years since World War II.

What follows are some of my observations on this bizarre and really astonishing news:

After reading the initial stories, I was struck by this from Time magazine. It comes from an eyewitness at the Bataclan Theatre, where a concert before 1,500 people was underway by the California rock group Eagles of Death Metal when the attackers struck. It apparently contradicts other reports that the attackers made statements blaming French foreign policy for the attacks:

The Eagles of Death Metal, from California.

“Julien Pearce described the moment gunmen opened fire during an Eagles of Death Metal gig. ‘I’ve seen 2 terrorists from my point of view with AK47s entering the concert room and firing randomly to the crowd,’ Pearce said.”

‘Everybody was on the floor covering their heads and we heard so many gunshots and the terrorists were very calm, very determined and they reloaded three or four times their weapons and they didn’t shout anything, they didn’t say anything, they were wearing masks and they were wearing black clothes and they were shooting at people on the floor.'”

Time also reported that, within hours after the attack, prominent buildings in New York, Toronto, San Francisco and other cities were lit in the French flag’s blue, red and white colours. Amazing co-ordination, wouldn’t you agree? I never should have guessed that city fathers and business leaders in America — who for the most part despise everything French — would all suddenly have this rather weird idea of lighting their buildings in the colours of the French Revolution.

One World Trade lit to show solidarity with France after Friday the 13th attacks.

It must be telepathy.

Curiously, no photos of the attackers have been published — or at least they are not presently being played by the major press organs — despite the fact that the Bataclan Theatre was crowded with people. There, four or five masked gunmen took their time shooting concert-goers, providing ample opportunity for video recording. Likewise, some among those in the crowded entertainment district where the Cambodian restaurant Petite Cambodge was attacked and people shot down on the street must have got footage of the mise en scene. The terrorists were killing people for three full hours; why do we see no video of the perpetrators in the press?

As with the Charlie Hebdo attackers, the terrorists wore balaclavas; why? As they are evidently intent on getting killed anyway, why do they mask their faces? It may be urged that winter is near and so perhaps they were trying to keep warm. But I think not; I think people who wear such gear do so because they have something to hide, and as terrorists bent on suicide cannot possibly have that idea, of hiding something, I cannot help but wonder whether something is being hidden from us about these terrorists. ‘What?’ you may well ask. Just to play Devil’s Advocate, let’s imagine that the terrorists are in fact members of a secret commando group attached to someone’s armed forces, who in fact were not killed by police but dissolved into the background after completing their mission — they would want to hide their faces, wouldn’t they?

The following, appended to a YouTube video showing events subsequent to the actual attacks, despite its unorthodox use of English, is the most detailed account I so far have encountered:

“Published on Nov 13, 2015

“Bloodbath in Paris: 150 are executed after jihadists take prisoners at rock show and Kalashnikov-wielding terrorist opens fire in eatery. Two suicide aircraft explode close football stadium. 1,500 troops sent as fringes close.

“More than 150 individuals were slaughtered and a few injured in a progression of dread assaults in the heart of Paris the previous evening.

“Up to 118 were slaughtered in the Bataclan show lobby where terrorists were holding many individuals prisoner.

The Bataclan Theatre in Paris, where terrorists killed over a hundred concert-goers.

“The terrorists yelled ‘Allah Akbar’ and ‘this is for Syria’ as they burst in and opened flame, observers have said.

“Police attacked the theater at around midnight, slaughtered the three radicals inside and liberated the remaining prisoners.

“French President Francois Hollande pronounced a highly sensitive situation for entire nation and close the greater part of its fringes.

“More than 150 individuals have been executed in a progression of facilitated fear assaults in the heart Paris which have incapacitated the French capital.

“Upwards of 118 individuals alone were slaughtered at a show in the Bataclan theater taking after a prisoner circumstance the previous evening that deduced in a suicide assault while another 11 were shot down at a Cambodian eatery.

“Four of the assailants were slaughtered in the show corridor, three by initiating their suicide vests and one shot by police – four policeman were executed amid the operation. Three more aggressors kicked the bucket close to the national stadium and a fourth was murdered in a road in eastern Paris.

“Only five miles away, two suicide planes exploded themselves outside the Stade de France sports stadium where the French football group was playing Germany.

“French police captured one suspected assailant who guaranteed to have been enrolled by ISIS close by three different fanatics, it has been accounted for.

“French President Francois Hollande proclaimed a national highly sensitive situation taking after what he called ‘extraordinary dread assaults’, close its fringes and sent 1,500 additional troops to the capital.

“Terrorists propelled a sum of six composed assaults at prominent destinations crosswise over Paris:

“Two suicide bomb assaults at a bar close to the Stade de France prompted President Hollande being emptied from the stadium. He has subsequent to announced a national highly sensitive situation.

“Two terrorists with AK47s burst into the Bataclan show lobby, where rock band Eagles of Death Metal were performing. They showered projectiles and tossed explosives into a great many individuals before they began butchering individuals one by one.

“A terrorist furnished with an AK47 murdered no less than 11 individuals at Cambodian eatery Le Petit Cambodge in the Bastille range on Rue Bichat at around 9pm.

Many photos of wounded in the first hours after the shootings — none of attackers; why?

“Gunfire and bomb impacts have additionally been accounted for at the Louver workmanship exhibition, the Pompidou Center and Les Halles strip mall.

“Witnesses have been recounting the ghastliness which developed inside the Bataclan theater, where more than 1,000 individuals were watching rock band Eagles of Death Metal perform.

“The recounted how AK47 wielding terrorists yelled ‘Allah Akbar’ as they “aimlessly” started shooting into a horde of individuals.

“‘It resembled a war zone, there was blood all over the place, there were bodies all over the place,’ Marc Coupris, 57, told the Guardian.

“He included: ‘I was at the furthest side of the lobby when shooting started. There appeared to be no less than two shooters. They shot from the gallery.’

“They shot at ‘extremely youthful’ individuals in the rough assault which kept going around 15 minutes, said Julien Pearce, a writer at Europe 1. The shooters, who witnesses have portrayed as young fellows in theirs 20s, reloaded three or four times as they gunned down honest individuals at irregular.

“We have met the enemy and they are us,” is a famous cartoon malapropism — but it’s a good question whose side ‘we’ are on, anyway.

“‘Three men with Kalashnikovs and wearing fire coats burst in amidst the show,’ another man, a man named Hervé, told the Telegraph subsequent to getting away through a crisis exit.”

The following paragraph, in a report compiled from press agencies published in the Bangkok Post, prompts obvious questions:

“A reporter inside a concert hall escaped, and reported it was a bloodbath. No police were inside. According to CNN, hostages were texting that they are being “killed one by one” and begging for a police raid.”

If the hostages at the Bataclan were able to punch out text messages while under the gun, why were none able to send out photos? If they wanted help, that would be the logical thing to do, wouldn’t it? Thereby to let police know precisely where to look for the gunmen shooting at them in the theatre.

In the same Bangkok Post story was contained the following:

“ISIS backers have started a Twitter hashtag in Arabic that translates to “Paris burns” to celebrate the attacks. They’re also using #FranceUnderAttack.”

It seems reasonable that if ISIS backers are labeling their tweets #FranceUnderAttack — readers will observe this is neither French nor Arabic but typical newspaper-headline English — they might well label their videos of the event that, too. One might also expect that, insofar as the events in Paris were obviously aimed at producing a public relations outcome, that some of their men would be shooting video, the better to glorify their essentially suicidal actions.

But no, we find nothing using that label from ISIS supporters on YouTube. Instead we find video reports from the Daily Mail and Reuters; in other words, mainstream press footage. ‘Paris Burns’ turns up nothing at all about the attacks; the entries are about either popular songs or an oddly named guard on the University of Illinois at Chicago’s basketball team, the Flames. No references to the aforementioned hashtags are found in search engine results except from news agencies. What happened to the actual people, the owners of those hashtags?

Paris Burns in action with the Flames of UIC.

They don’t seem to exist. Don’t you find that queer?

The peculiarity of these absences is enhanced if we consider that, hitherto, Arab terrorists have been at pains to impress, via video, viewers at large with events they luckily escaped: witness the video of journalist Daniel Pearl’s beheading, the several lovingly edited videos of ISIS massacres and those of al-Qaida.

Still more strange is that no group with real ties to the attackers has come forward to claim credit. How do we know that? Because the groups that are claiming credit have produced no video from their men in action during the attacks.

What’s going on here?

I realise people do not always act logically; perhaps this is especially true of extremists. But I don’t think it reasonable to assume that they always act illogically. Yet this is what we find in each of the highly publicised incidents of the last 15 years involving terrorists. The facts in the cases simply don’t add up to the stories as officially acknowledged. Whether it’s this attack; the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris last January; the Boston Marathon bombing; the bizarre murder by a US Navy SEAL team of persons alleged to be Osama bin Laden and his son, and the subsequent deaths of most members of that team in an aircraft disaster; the World Trade Center imbroglio of 2001 — so many inconsistencies in the official stories are adduced by critics officialdom no longer tries to defend them. They stay quiet and hope that repetition will have its wonted effect: that people will finally accept unthinkingly that at which their reason revolts.

People generally, I think, rebel at the notion that their governments, their hired ‘public servants’, could be so perverse as to, not only work against the interests of, but actually to kill, their own people. Yet of this history affords ample evidence and, sometimes, frank admission from the actors themselves. Winston Churchill, prime minister of Great Britain during World War II, admitted, for example, in his own history of the conflict, that his cryptographers had cracked the German code, and that he deliberately allowed enemy bombers to attack the industrial city of Coventry without opposition, though he knew of the attack in advance. That attack resulted in thousands of civilian deaths. Churchill defended his action by saying it was necessary to allow the attack in order to keep secret from the Germans that the British were privy to their Enigma code.

Others, who lived through those times, say war fever was flagging in England then, that many wondered why the British government refused to negotiate despite Hitler’s repeated offers, and that Churchill allowed the attack as means of whipping up a frenzy of popular hatred against the Germans, the better to carry on the war.

The United States government, had likewise cracked the Japanese code, and knew every radio and cable communication sent back and forth by Japan’s diplomats and military. The US government thus knew for a certainty the Japanese had decided upon war, knew the Pearl Harbor attack was impending, and ignored warnings from friendly governments regarding movements of the Imperial War Fleet. They virtually welcomed the attack of 7th December, 1941, because US president Franklin Roosevelt had long before decided upon war, and needed an incident, like the 1915 torpedoing of the Lusitania, to galvanize popular sentiment against his chosen enemies.

None of this is disputed anymore, not even by official historians, though it is only quietly admitted.

A more spectacular example of how our governments treat us as pawns in a game only they have knowledge of — an example I think probably touches much of what has happened since the last world war — is the famous Operation Gladio. Gladio was inspired by the resistance fighters of WWII, the so-called ‘stay behinds’ who used guerrilla tactics against the German armies from within the German lines. It was put in place for use against the Russians should they over run Europe, an event many deemed inevitable during the late ’40s and ’50s. Though the Soviet threat faded with time, Operation Gladio persisted, its men and weapons used to discredit left-wing movements during the ’60s and ’70s. Incredibly, it is now seriously affirmed that Gladio operatives acting under official cover carried out the Bologna train station bombing in 1980 that killed 85 people; that the explosives used came from NATO stocks.

The emblem of Gladio.

Why did they do it? To sway public opinion in Italy, where the Communist Party was an important political force, much to the dismay of America and Italy’s capitalist-leaning Establishment. The existence of Operation Gladio was publicly revealed in the Italian Parliament by Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti on 3rd August, 1990 to an audience wholly taken aback by what they heard. Subsequently, a parliamentary commission in 2000 investigating Gladio concluded:

‘Those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organised or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as has been discovered more recently, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence.’

That quote and those following are from a fuller exposition on Gladio found here.

Bologna train station after the 1980 bombing: 85 died and more than 200 were injured.

“In October Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou confirmed there had been a Gladio network in Greece. In Germany a TV programme shocked the nation by revealing how former members of Hitler’s Special Forces SS had been part of a German stay-behind network. The Belgian Parliament appointed a special committee to investigate the existence – confirmed by the defence minister – of a Belgian Gladio network.

“Most sensitively the Belgian parliamentarians discovered that the secret NATO army was still active. They found that a secret meeting of Generals directing the secret stay-behind armies in the numerous countries in Western Europe had been held in the secret NATO-linked Gladio headquarters ACC as recently as October 23 and 24, 1990.

“In France President Mitterand claimed the French Gladio network had been dissolved long ago but to his enormous embarrassment Andreotti then claimed the French had taken part in the recent meeting in Brussels. And so it went on. British defence officials refused to comment. In Portugal, contrary to official denials, a retired general confirmed there had been such a network in Portugal, while in Spain former defence minister Alberto Oliart claimed it was childish to ‘ask whether also under dictator Franco a secret right-wing army had existed in the country because ‘here Gladio was the government’.”

“In Turkey former prime minister Bulent Ecevit went even further and admitted that a secret army had been involved in torture, massacres, assassinations and coups d’etat, prompting the serving defence minister Giray to retort ‘Ecevit had better keep his fucking mouth shut!’

“In all, 12 EU countries were affected and on November 22 1990 the European Parliament debated the issue.

“The tone was set by Greek parliamentarian Ephremidis:

“‘Mr. President, the Gladio system has operated for four decades under various names. It has operated clandestinely, and we are entitled to attribute to it all the destabilization, all the provocation and all the terrorism that have occurred in our countries over these four decades, and to say that, actively or passively, it must have had an involvement.’ Ephremidis sharply criticised the entire stay-behind network: ‘The fact is that it was set up by the CIA and NATO which, while purporting to defend democracy were actually undermining it and using it for their own nefarious purposes.'”

Any who still wonder whether I am engaging here in warrantless speculation upon an apocryphal group may wish to view this documentary, from BBC2 aired in 1992.

Of more interest with regard to the Friday the 13th Paris attacks, is the alleged existence of an organisation called Glado B: ‘A development of Operation Gladio to help roll out the “war on terror” by promoting false flag US-sponsored terrorism to be blamed on Muslim extremists’, details concerning which may be found here.

Many, many more instances of black operations carried out by governments against their own people or foreign innocents may be adduced. Considered in the light of Operation Gladio, can anyone still have doubts regarding who carried out the Kennedy assassination? Whether the Tonkin Gulf Incident that led to US invasion of Vietnam, or the Weapons of Mass Destruction allegation that precipitated the Iraq invasion, were ‘failures of intelligence’ or outright lies?

So, why France again? My guess is, it’s a lesson to the European Union. France, with its large population — some 20 percent — of people with Arabic heritage, has been less hostile to Arab and Muslim states than any leading European country, and far less hostile than the United States. So why would Arab terrorists single out France, where random shooting, as in these latest attacks, cannot but harm many with Muslim or Arabic backgrounds? Let us play Devil’s Advocate again and assume they wouldn’t. Who would? Who has a grudge against France or the EU? Israel and its allies, notably the US. The EU is about to require that Israeli products originating from Arab territories seized during the 1967 Six-Day War and illegally settled by Israelis, be so labeled. The intent thereof is that people wishing to boycott products from those territories will be enabled thereby so to do.

Israel and its supporters argue that this move by the EU will put Europe in the anti-Israeli camp, on the side of anti-Semites, and is tantamount to attacking Israel. The EU, however, has ignored Israel’s protests. So the EU needed to be taught a lesson, and that lesson came last night.

I am not saying, let me affirm, that is what happened: I don’t know what happened. But I know enough to be wary of believing the official story whenever incidents occur such as those last night in Paris. I know there are people working to twist whatever happens to political advantage, that wars are underway in the Middle East, that desperation is found on both sides, that many in either camp will do anything for victory.

So maybe the Arabs, the Muslims, or their supporters did indeed pull off the attacks last night. But it wouldn’t surprise me awfully if they didn’t.